


One Man In His Time Plays Many Parts

by JackEPeace



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fitz's birthday, Squad Challenge, Team Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 08:45:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11848065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/pseuds/JackEPeace
Summary: A ficlet for Fitz's birthday.





	One Man In His Time Plays Many Parts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plinys](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/gifts), [ophvelias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophvelias/gifts).



> This was written for the squad as part of the squad challenge. 
> 
> Not really edited. 
> 
> Titles comes from Shakespeare because I panicked and had no time to think of anything else.

They keep her locked away, an animal in her cage, until they want something from her. Ophelia has come to expect this now, has come to understand that the appearance of someone on the team who isn’t Leopold simply means that someone is about to expect her to do something. Not ask, of course, but expect, knowing that she’s not in a position to refuse them anything.

Just like it used to be, when she wasn’t completely herself and at the whim of the men who knew how to issue commands.

Ophelia watches, trying to stamp down the curiosity, as Coulson enters the room where they keep the containment pod and comes to stand on the opposite side of the shatterproof window. He looks like he’s aged so much in the past months, no doubt an effect of the stress he’s been under and his time in the Framework where time ceased to mean much of anything at all and entire lifetimes could be lived in the span of days. Ophelia makes sure to keep her own expression placid and serene, robotic enough to make Coulson feel comfortable around her now.

There’s still a chance, always a chance, that her powers wouldn’t work fast enough, that she could die in this newly human body if he decided to use the gun she sees tucked into his waistband.

Now, Ophelia is afraid of so many things she’d never known to be afraid of before.

“Do you know what today is?” Coulson asks her without any sort of greeting or preamble.

Ophelia nods. “August 19th,” she tells him, having seen the date on the top of her tablet when she’d woken up that morning and checked it out of habit. She’d imagined her days as human so much differently, had never imagined they would be spent waiting for time to pass, staring up at a smooth, blank ceiling, waiting to be remembered.

“Fitz’s birthday,” Coulson tells her, seeming almost as though he expects her to already have this seemingly valuable piece of information.

Ophelia’s eyes widen slightly. “Oh.”

Coulson studies her. “Do you…you do know what a birthday is, right?”

Ophelia frowns, trying to stop her brow from knitting together and failing. “Yes. I know many things, Agent Coulson,” she assures him, like she imagines AIDA might have done.

“You’re important to Fitz,” Coulson continues as though she hasn’t spoken at all. “And he’s important to us. We decided,” he continues and she knows that the ‘we’ means the new group of people in her life who can apparently make decisions about her without her consent, “that we should let you out. For today.”

Ophelia tilts her head slightly. “You’re worried that he’ll decide to spin the day down here with me instead.”

Coulson’s face answers for him. Ophelia wonders about this idea, if she would insist that Leopold go back with the team, that he spend his special day with all the people who care about him rather than just her. She wonders if she could say the words, insist that she understands, that she’s not enough for him. Or if she would be selfish and seize on the chance to have him all to herself.

“You have to wear your gauntlets,” Coulson says rather than answering. “And if you think about doing anything-”

“Even after all this time, you still think I’m a monster,” Ophelia says quietly, annoyed by the hurt that slips into her voice at the thought of it. She’s fought alongside them, done her best to protect them. But still, they keep her locked away for their own peace of mind.

Again, Coulson doesn’t answer. He just turns his attention toward the panel on the door and within seconds the pod door is open and Coulson is fitting her with the gauntlets that control her powers, that suppress them and keep them hidden inside her body until they’re just a dull thrumming that she can’t ever escape from.

Ophelia submits to his insistent hands, bites her tongue against the solid clamp of the gauntlets around her wrists. She thinks of seeing Leopold instead, how it will be to see him for once instead of him having to come to see her.

She finds him still in his room, the door slightly ajar, the smell of a recently run shower and shampoo drifting into the hallway. Ophelia pushes the door the rest of the way open and there’s a small sliver of time, a small window where she can look at him without him realizing that she’s there. She tries to take it all in: how he sits on the edge of the bed, hair still slightly damp, one shoe already on but unlaced, the other hanging in his hands as though he’s briefly distracted himself with his own thoughts. His expression, clouded and, as she’s noticed here, sad. Always sad.

And then Leopold is looking up at the sound of the door, his surprise taking over ever other expression on his face. “Ophelia.” He gets to his feet, his shoe discarded and forgotten as he moves toward her. “How-”

Leopold sees the gauntlets on her wrist, the proof that her parole has been legally granted. He puts his hands on the metal and she imagines that she can feel him. “What are you doing here?”

Ophelia exhales slowly, her heart fluttery and nervous in her chest. She’d wanted to become human for him, had been so certain that it would be easy when she did. That the equation of them together would be as easy to understand here as it was in their other world. But there are so many different factors that she never could have accounted for and she knows that she spends more time away from him than she does with him.

Seeing him, being close enough to him to touch, always makes her ache. A deliciously painful hurt that spreads through her entire body and makes her want to cling to him and never let go.

Ophelia settles for just stepping closer to him, to moving into his space so that she can feel his warmth, smell the lingering water on his skin, the softness of his newly washed hair. “Happy birthday,” she says, certain that that’s the expectation.

Leopold rests a hand on her cheek, smiling faintly. “Are you my present?” He asks as he leans in closer to her, though he doesn’t kiss her just yet.

Ophelia tries to ignore the impatience suddenly churning in her stomach. Impatience is a feeling that she’s very familiar with, unfortunately, though she hasn’t quite perfected the art of dealing with it.

“Coulson thought you might like to see me,” Ophelia tells him, rather than relaying the entirety of their conversation, the implications of what had gone unsaid.

“I always want to see you,” Leopold assures her and she focuses on the weight of his hand against her skin, hot and tangible. “Ophelia…”

She kisses him because she’s tired of waiting and it’s like the first breath she ever took: a necessary relief, a burning need spreading through her lungs and body, something she needed to survive.

Every time she kisses him, it feels just like that.

Leopold reaches his other hand behind her to push the door the rest of the way closed and when Ophelia hears the latch catch, she wills herself to relax, to press her body closer to his. Content in the certainty that, for the time being at least, it’s only the two of them.

How she’d always wanted it to be.

Just the two of them.

Every sensation feels new and different, the first time all over again and Ophelia reveals in it, in the feeling of Leopold flooding her sensations and pushing away everything else. The feeling of him kissing her, touching her, slowly undressing her with hands that shake slightly with impatience and longing. The feeling of his breath, hot in her mouth and on her skin, how it feels to breathe him in, to hold him closer and still not feel like it’s enough. The feeling how him laying her gently down on the bed, his hand curled around the name of her neck, his lips on her neck and chest and breasts and stomach. And between her thighs. The feeling of hearing her own voice, unfamiliar to her ears, as she whimpers and moans and begs until she can’t do anything at all but gasp, momentarily weightless and tight and silent until his name whooshes out of her lungs in an sudden rush of air. And how it feels it have him inside her, how it feels to have their bodies flush together, no space between them, as he holds onto her and moves inside her, his forehead presses to hers, his voice soft as it slips across her skin.

And when they finish, when the closeness between them diminishes enough to make her miss him all over again, Ophelia can’t help but find herself seized by the feeling of inexplicable sadness, the feeling that always follows being with him like this. Knowing that he’ll have to leave her soon, that they can’t stay like this forever.

Only now, he doesn’t move. He doesn’t remind them both of how it won’t always be like this, how soon they won’t have to worry about anyone else.

Leopold just rolls onto his back and pulls her with him, holding her against his chest as she rests her head against his skin, listening to the beating of his heart. His arms are tight around her, holding her close, a promise in itself.

Ophelia closes her eyes against the sensation of him threading his fingers through her hair, willing herself not to go to sleep and miss even a moment of this. “This is nice,” she tells him quietly, more to get him talking and keep herself awake.

Leopold nods, his leg twined together with hers, the closeness between them languid and easy. No rush. “This is all I ever want,” he admits. “This is…” He pauses, his lips against the crown of her head. “Perfect.”

Ophelia feels a tug in her chest, a lurch in her stomach. Butterflies, she knows they’re called -a metaphor. A sign of anxiety or excitement, fear or love. The human body never ceases to confuse her.

“It is your birthday,” Ophelia says, her fingers tracing nonsense patterns on his bare chest. “Aren’t you supposed to feel special? And get what you want?”

Leopold laughs slightly, a low rumble against her ear. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it,” he tells her. “Though I think that mostly applies to being a kid. When you’re older, those things don’t matter as much.”

Ophelia lifts her head, resting her chin on his chest so she can look at him. “You aren’t old,” she tells him.

“I’m thirty. Christ,” Leopold grumbles, scrubbing his free hand across his face. “Once we joined SHIELD I wasn’t even ever sure I would make it this far.”

Ophelia isn’t sure that she wants to think about that, the reminder of how fragile these temporary bodies are. “Tell me about your other birthdays,” she says. “What were they like?”

Leopold smiles, his fingers playing through her hair once more, brushing against her skull. She closes her eyes, feeling tired all over again, contented and happy. This lazy closeness with him is nothing she’s ever felt before and she wants to remember everything about it: the rubbery feeling in her muscles, the lightness in her chest, the certainty that even though the world is turning without them it doesn’t matter as long as they’re here together.

“My ma always tried to make them special when I was a kid,” he tells her. “Especially after my dad left. Cake and balloons and she always sang to me, even though she insisted that she was terrible at it.” Leopold smiles, and Ophelia wishes she could see what was going on in his mind, the images and sounds playing through his brain right now. “There wasn’t always money for presents but she always made it special. We went to the zoo once, to see the monkeys.”

Ophelia can’t help but smile as well, his own nostalgia contagious. “I feel like there’s so much I don’t know about you,” she tells him. “Not this you.”

Leopold’s hand slips from her hair and to the side of her face, his thumb tracing the smooth roundness of her cheek. “I want to be better for you,” he tells her, “here. I want things to be better.”

Ophelia smiles, turning her head so that she can kiss his palm. “They are,” she tells him. “We’re here together, aren’t we?”

In the other world, that had been her guiding tenant, the only thing that mattered: them, together.

“And,” Ophelia continues, “I want you to have a good birthday. Like you did when you were little.”

Leopold shifts them slightly so they’re closer together, so it’s easier for him to pull her to him, to kiss her softly. “I am,” he tells her. “With you, here. You’re exactly what I want.”

Ophelia is glad that he’s kissing her because she’s not sure that she has the words to assure him that that’s all she’s ever wanted, was to be wanted by him. To be enough.

She wants to hear more about him, the person he was here, the years that have passed without her. But it seems like further conversation with have to wait. Ophelia tries not to worry, tries to assure herself that they’ll have time for talking later.

Today, at least, it seems like all they have is time.

* * *

 

Later, they’re together with the rest of the team and Ophelia tries not to let all of it overwhelm her: the voices, the bodies, the feeling of excitement and happiness that pervades the air. The way that she’s a part of all of it, how she has Leopold at her side and the other members of the team around her. Including her, no doubt for his sake, because it’s his birthday, but she’ll take it. She’ll savor each sensation and file it away in her mind to turn over later, when she’s alone again.

Ophelia is sitting on the couch beside Leopold and Daisy and Daisy doesn’t seem to mind, talking about the last party they’d thrown for Leopold and how it had been nearly a week late because of missions and near death but there had been cake so honestly what more they did need? And Leopold is smiling, looking at Daisy while she talks, giving Ophelia the chance to study him while his attention is otherwise occupied. He looks, she thinks, less sad than he did this morning and it makes her feel lighter as well.

“Speaking of cake,” Daisy suddenly says brightly, glancing away from the two of them and the person heading in their direction. Jemma. “I was starting to get a little impatient.”

Jemma rolls her eyes. “Well you’re perfectly capable of getting your own cake,” she points out, handing a plate over to Daisy as she settles down on the couch beside her. “Here,” she says, handing over another plate to Leopold. “Happy birthday, Fitz.”

Ophelia feels her eyes widen slightly as Jemma hands a fourth piece over to her. She takes it and their eyes meet and neither of them say anything, though Ophelia assumes there really isn’t too much to say right now anyway.

“Daisy and I made it,” Jemma continues, “so you can direct your complaints to her.”

Daisy scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Excuse you, I know how to make a birthday cake,” she says. “And don’t you have like four degrees? If you can’t make a cake then there’s something wrong?”

Ophelia listens as the three of them squabble good naturedly, smiling to herself around the bite of cake on her plastic fork. She feels like this is how things had been before, how he might have been before, how things might be again.

This moment, this man beside her, these people including her at least for now, all of these things are the reason she wanted to be human in the first place.

Finally Leopold takes a bite of the cake, rolling his eyes at Jemma and Daisy. “It’s delicious,” he tells them. “Honestly it’s perfect.” He puts his hand on Ophelia’s knee, an absent sort of gesture that he doesn’t even seem aware of. “All of this is perfect.”

           


End file.
